


What Love Is

by saiikavon



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Character Study, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2019-02-23 22:19:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13199721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saiikavon/pseuds/saiikavon
Summary: On Lance, and love: His first love, and how he knows when he's fallen in love with Keith. An introspective piece, with a dash of klance.





	What Love Is

**Author's Note:**

> For @redchaaos on tumblr, as part of the Voltron Secret Santa 2017. Happy holidays!

When Lance was twelve years old, he started a “love journal”: a list of the signs and traits of love, so that he’d know it when he looked for it. He knew how love was supposed to be and what it was supposed to feel like. He kept adding to his list over the years, jotting down things he’d seen in movies and from his family, things that he’d felt and experienced himself as he began to discover it on his own, little by little. He knew everything from the most cliché to what he felt was the most genuine and true, the stuff that makes love last for years upon years. He knew that love was a little different for everyone, but that if you did it just right, it was a wonderful adventure that would never end.

Lance knew love. That’s how he knew, at that moment, that he was in love with Keith.

“Oh, quiznak.”

***

Lance met his first love in sixth grade, on the first day at his new school. It wasn’t just his first experience in a new school, but in a new city, with new people, and a brand-new personal discovery. He’d had little crushes here and there, over the years, all fleeting affairs born of Lance’s general appreciation for pretty people. All of them had been girls, however, and that’s what made Alex different. Alex was a boy, and his friend.

There was just something about the way he looked in navy blue, and the fact that he was so good at math but never made a big deal about it. Lance spent time admiring him in algebra and secretly celebrated when they were placed together for group work, though not exactly recognizing his crush for what it was. He thought he just found Alex cool, and that he wanted to be friends. He didn’t fully understand why he was so excited when he was invited to stay at Alex’s house, or why he always looked especially forward to lunch every afternoon. None of it fully hit him until Alex got a girlfriend halfway through the school year, and his heart plummeted.

He spent much of that day wrapped up in his own thoughts, trying to piece together why he felt so sad and confused. Sure, Alex was his friend, but that didn’t explain why when Alex walked in with his girlfriend, Lance’s eyes darted immediately to their interlocked hands and he felt sick to his stomach.

He wondered if he was like his tío Ramón, his mother’s brother, who often visited with his husband in the summer. Lance had always admired girls, though, and it didn’t make sense for his feelings to change so suddenly. He wondered if he was misinterpreting, or lying to himself, and the sick feeling got worse and worse.

He stayed home one day, claiming an actual stomachache—not entirely untrue, under the circumstances. Still, his mother kept giving him skeptical looks even as she let him stay tucked in bed.

“What is really bothering you, my love?” she asked him at last. “Are you having problems at school?”

“No, Mom,” he said. He didn’t look at her, but he could feel her hard stare, unrelenting until he gave up and sighed, “Mom…how did you know you liked Dad?”

His mother looked surprised, but then a smile spread across her face. “Ah, so that’s the problem. My boy has a crush, hmm?”

Lance didn’t blush or smile, but fiddled with the edge of his comforter, that sick feeling still swirling inside him. “I think I like someone I’m not supposed to,” he admitted, very softly. His mother frowned in concern, and stroked his hair.

“Why do you say that, my love?”

“Well, we’re friends, and he—” Lance froze at his slip, and glanced at his mother for a reaction. If she was surprised, or angry, she didn’t show it. Lance swallowed his fear. “—he has a girlfriend.”

His mother smiled at him. “I see, so it’s about Alex.” Lance lowered his gaze guiltily, but his mother just continued stroking his hair lovingly.  
“That is a lot to have on your mind, isn’t it?” she mused. “First crush on a boy, and a friend you don’t want to lose, who already has someone—all very scary for someone your age. I went through something similar around that time, too.”

Lance expression brightened. He looked up at his mother in awe, as though seeing someone different in her place. He sat up a little straighter. “Really?”

She continued to smile, and nodded. “Oh, yes. I probably had a lot of the same worries, too—I’ll bet you’re asking yourself, ‘Am I like tío Ramón, or do I still like girls, too?’”

Lance gaped at her. “How’d you know?”

“I told you, my love. I asked myself a similar question at your age. Her name was Greta—she was very popular, you know, and all the boys liked her. I just didn’t expect I’d like her just as much. I worried so much that I was becoming someone else, that I was confusing myself, that I’d have to make a choice somewhere down the line. And your tío Ramón hadn’t figured out yet that he liked boys, so I didn’t even have him to talk to.”

“So what did you do?” Lance asked. He huddled in his blankets, leaning forward excitedly. “You chose Dad eventually, right, so does that mean you like boys now?”

His mother chuckled, something warm and mysterious in her eyes. “Oh, my love. I chose your father eventually, yes, but what I felt for Greta is still a part of me. If I’d ever had the courage to tell her back then…maybe we’d have dated, fallen in love, and maybe I would have married her instead.”

Lance’s heart sank. “You didn’t tell her?”

“She was my friend,” his mother said. “I knew she liked boys, and I was too scared. I drifted apart from her instead, avoided her so I didn’t have to deal with those feelings. That is what I regret, more than not telling her.”

Lance bit his lip. “What if I’m too scared, too?”

“Well…” His mother sighed. “Your feelings are your own, so you don’t have to confess to him if you’re not comfortable. But friendships are important, especially with the person you love. Be happy for him, and be glad of the relationship you have. If you want to tell him something, tell him that you don’t want your friendship to change, even though he is seeing someone.”

She leaned closer, then, and stroked his cheek. “Most importantly, my love, be honest with yourself. That is as important in love as anything else.”

She kissed his forehead, and stood to leave. He thought about what she said, letting it sink in. As she opened the door, he called out to her one more time.

“You never answered my first question,” he said. His mother just smiled again, just mysterious as before.

“I suppose I just knew.”

Lance was given the day to think things over. He sat in bed a long while, considering his mother’s advice for a very long time. On a whim, he finally got out of bed and pulled out a notebook, in which he started writing down all the things she’d told him about love, about what was most important. He wrote down how he felt about Alex, what he liked and what he didn’t like, and what he still didn’t understand. When he was finished, he read it to himself and then set it aside, figuring that it would be important again. At the time, just having it there gave him enough confidence to face Alex again the next day.

He didn’t wind up telling Alex how he felt, at least not the entirety of it; but he did take his mother’s advice. Alex broke up with his girlfriend at the end of the school year, but Lance’s feelings had settled by then, and he remained content with their friendship until Alex moved away two years later.

The love journal he continued for years, until he inevitably left it behind when he and the rest of the soon-to-be paladins were launched into space.

***

Years ago, Lance’s mother had told him that she “just knew” when she fell in love with his father. Since then, Lance had taken into account every single tangible factor he could think of in love, like he was collecting the building blocks to put together a shape he could barely make out. When all the pieces came together, all the feelings and experiences and important lessons, he thought he would see it. In a way, he’d been trying to prepare himself for the day he truly fell in love, the day he would “just know” like his mother did.

When he looked at Keith, standing still and serene against the backdrop of stars, he knew. Yet he wasn’t as prepared as he thought he would be. All of his notes and scribblings gave him a muted picture, a half-comparison, the way he could only vaguely understand what it was like to be struck by lightning by comparing it to burning his finger on a hot stove. He couldn’t have known until it happened, until he was looking at Keith and feeling like everything was perfect and right.

He didn’t realize he was staring until Keith turned around, feeling Lance’s gaze on his back, and frowned at him in confusion. “Is everything okay, Lance?”

Lance just smiled back, and came to stand beside him. This time, he thought, he’d actually confess.

**Author's Note:**

> Check out my tumblr!
> 
> Main: http://saiikavon.tumblr.com/  
> Writing blog: http://saiikasnotebook.tumblr.com/


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